Welcome back to Black Life. Thank you to all those who were able to join us for Mandy Harris Williams’ performance last month. It was an absolute pleasure to host you all. We’ll keep you updated about the archival material from that evening as it becomes available.
Next up in our event series is Darol Olu Kae. Kae is a filmmaker from and based in Los Angeles whose artistic practice focuses on the reverberations of collective memory, time, and mythology through a critical and contemporary lens. His works blurs the line between poetics and everyday life. Kae has collaborated with filmmakers A.G. Rojas (Godchild) and Kahlil Joseph (BLKNWS).
His latest work, I ran from it and was still in it, is a short film that poetically interweaves personal family memories with found footage to offer a more complex portrait of familial loss and separation. I ran from it recently and was still in it recently garnered the Golden Leopard prize at the Locarno Film Festival.
We are thrilled to have him as the Black Life artist in residence for the months of November and December. Please stay tuned for two programs from Kae including a radio transmission and a visual mix woven by Kae screening on the afternoon of Thursday December 3 in collaboration with Locally Grown TV. A discussion via digital stream will follow.
RSVP links for Kae’s events soon coming. Do stay tuned.
For this newsletter, we’re excited to share a special guest contribution from Claudrena N. Harold, a professor of African American and African Studies and History. In 2007, Harold published her first book, The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 1918-1942. In 2013, the University of Virginia Press published The Punitive Turn: New Approaches to Race and Incarceration, a volume Harold coedited with Deborah E. McDowell and Juan Battle. Her latest monograph is New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South, which was published by the University of Georgia Press.
As a part of her ongoing work on the history of black student activism at UVA, she has written, produced, and co-directed with Kevin Everson eight short films: Sugarcoated Arsenic, Fastest Man in the State, 70 kg, U. Of Virginia, 1976, How Can We Ever Be Late, Black Bus Stop, Hampton, and We Demand.
Here’s an excerpt from Claudrena’s contribution: The Art of Peer Pressure: Black Fire UVA!
Launched in December 2011, Black Fire currently consists of eight short films, Sugarcoated Arsenic, U. of Virginia 1976, We Demand, Fastest Man in the State, 70kg, How Can I Ever Be Late, Black Bus Stop, and Hampton. Though individually distinct in their formal qualities, these films reflect our deep interest in the interiority of black life, particularly those formal and informal spaces where African Americans communed, hobnobbed, prayed, loved, quarreled, reconciled, and moved on. Within these spaces, our gaze fixates on the epic and the quotidian, the sacred and the profane, the individual and the collective.
Click here to read the full piece.
Black Life Podcast
The latest guest on Black Life’s podcast is Sanford Jenkins. Born in Philadelphia, Jenkins earned a BA at Morehouse College and an MFA in Film and Television Production at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. His award-winning short films have played at festivals including American Cinematheque, BlackStar, and Camerimage, and have been supported by Bureau of Creative Works, Issa Rae Presents, NoBudge and Vimeo.
He is currently developing the narrative feature JOY AND PAIN, supported by the San Francisco Film Society (SFFILM) and the Westridge Foundation.
We talk about his transition from working on Wall Street to becoming an Independent Filmmaker, the Great Migration of Black people west, and the development of his new narrative feature JOY AND PAIN.
BLACK ART MIXTAPE #03 THEY SCARE EASY NOW
1.1 Fela Kuti - Underground System
turn by turn,,,
1.2 Fela Kuti - Sorrow, Tears and Blood
Police don go away // Army don disappear // Them leave sorrow, tears and blood // Them regular trademark
2. Professor P. L. O. Lumumba - The Day Nigeria Wakes Up, Africa Will Never Be The Same Again
3. COLONIAL REPERCUSSIONS - Autumn Knight: "Sanity TV: On Location"
"Sanity TV" is a series of interview-based performances that investigate the flexible boundaries of identity and psyche. On "Sanity TV" there is no promotion of sanity or insanity. The interviews begin in earnest, then slowly unravel toward the unrecognizable, toward a non-reality. Each “guest” is invited to surrender a position of authority over their own ideas of self, if only for the duration of the interview.
Autumn Knight (Performance Artist, New York City, USA)
4. Saaphyri - Lip Chap Prayer
Saaphyri reads H-Town DOWNE after she already dragged her into the bedroom. She then proceeds to pray for her.